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By Keith BradsherTHE NEW YORK TIMES • Sunday June 16, 2013 10:11 AM

HONG KONG — Chanting slogans such as “Shame, U.S. government,” demonstrators marched from a
downtown park to the U.S. Consulate yesterday to urge that Edward Snowden, the former National
Security Agency contractor accused of leaking documents about American surveillance programs, be
allowed to remain in Hong Kong.

One of the protest’s organizers, Tom Grundy, a British expatriate, called on China and the
United States to refrain from pressuring Hong Kong about Snowden. “We want an independent judiciary
to decide on the case,” Grundy said.

In his first comment on Snowden’s case, Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong’s chief executive, indicated
yesterday that Hong Kong would follow established procedures if it is asked to surrender Snowden.
He also indicated that the Hong Kong government would look into Snowden’s disclosure that the
National Security Agency might have gained covert access to the main hub of Internet servers in
Hong Kong, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Although the protest was small — organizers said about 900 people showed up, but the police said
it was more like 300 — it underlined the political maneuvering set off by Snowden’s arrival in Hong
Kong. He has disclosed classified documents about the U.S. government’s monitoring of the Internet
in the United States and in mainland China and Hong Kong.